New JFK files reveal mafia plots, FBI warning on Oswald

WASHINGTON: The US government on Thursday released a mammoth, long-awaited trove of secret files on the killing of President John F. Kennedy, offering intriguing new insights into events surrounding one of the most infamous assassinations in history.

While many of the 2,891 records released by the National Archives were raw intelligence and uncorroborated, they were almost certain to reinvigorate rampant conspiracy theories about the Nov. 22, 1963 slaying of JFK in Dallas, Texas.

An outlandish CIA plan to recruit the mafia to kill Fidel Castro, FBI foreknowledge of the plot to murder Kennedy’s killer, and Kremlin suspicions of a homegrown rightwing conspiracy were among the highlights, even as some files were withheld for further review on national security grounds.

One document from 1975 detailed how in the early days of Kennedy’s presidency the CIA offered $150,000 to ItalianAmerican mob boss Sam Giancana to organize the killing of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Giancana in return sought the CIA’s help to place a listening device in the room of his mistress — a Las Vegas entertainer — whom he thought was having an affair.

Other possible ideas to kill the Communist leader — said to be a keen diver — included contaminating his diving suit with disease causing bacteria, or booby-trapping a seashell with a bomb.

The plan was scrapped when it was determined “there was no shell in the Caribbean area large enough to hold a sufficient amount of explosive.”

Another document included a transcript of a Nov. 24, 1963 conversation with then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who said his agency informed police of a threat against the life of Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald the night before Oswald was murdered. Police, however, failed to act.

While many theories over the years have related to Oswald’s ties to Cuban or Soviet operatives, an FBI memo in 1963 indicated Kennedy’s death was source of deep mourning in the USSR.